Caterpillar has caused an uproar in Canada with a controversial plant closing. But the company attracted so many people to an Indiana jobs fair that the event had to be shut down earlier than planned.
On Friday, Caterpillar's Progress Rail Services said it was closing the 62-year-old Electro-Motive Canada plant in London, Ontario, about two hours west of Toronto.
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In explaining the shutdown, Billy Ainsworth, the CEO of Progress Rail, said in a letter to employees that all the company's facilities "must achieve competitive costs, quality and operating flexibility to compete and win in the global marketplace, and expectations at the London plant were no different."
It's the second big closing in that part of Canada in a year's time. Navistar shut its truck plant in nearby Chatham, Ontario in 2010, eliminating 1,100 jobs.
But at the moment, Caterpillar is the toast of Muncie, in east central Indiana.
Over the weekend, Caterpillar held a jobs fair that attracted about 3,000 applicants for jobs paying between $12.50 and $18 an hour, according to the Muncie Free Press.
